A personal area network (PAN) is a computer network used for communication among computing devices, such as, for example, telephones and personal digital assistants, in proximity to one another. For example, the computing devices may be on or close to a person's body. The reach of a PAN may be only a few meters. PANs may be wired with a computer bus, such as, for example, a universal serial bus (USB) or a FireWire bus. A wireless personal area network (WPAN) can also be made possible with wireless network technologies, such as, for example, IrDA, Bluetooth, Wireless USB, Z-Wave, 6LoWPAN and ZigBee.
WPANs can use the same radio interface with different protocol suites. For example, the following different protocol suites may use the same wireless radio: Zigbee, 6LoWPAN, WirelessHART, and other IEEE 802.15.4 based WPANs. It is also possible that the radios of WPANs are different. For example, one WPAN could be Bluetooth-based while another WPAN could be UWB-based.